Subject: Re: Couscous Questions

From: [email-masked] (Bohdan Szymanik)
Date: Fri, 7 Jan 1994 11:55:42

In article <[email-masked]> [email-masked] (Bohdan Szymanik) writes:
From: [email-masked] (Bohdan Szymanik)
Subject: Re: Couscous Questions
Date: Fri, 7 Jan 1994 11:51:36

In article <[email-masked]> [email-masked] (Bohdan 
Szymanik) writes:
>From: [email-masked] (Bohdan Szymanik)
>Subject: Couscous Questions
>Date: Wed, 5 Jan 1994 16:21:57

>Hi Netters and food lovers,

>I'm now interested in how they make couscous. I know it's made from the 
center 
>of wheat grains treated someway. I've heard things like they roll the 
grains 
>in olive oil and then flour. Is this true?

>Isn't semolina the center of wheat grains? Could you use coarse semolina to 
>make couscous yourself, or how bout bulgar wheat? 

>I'm asking because it's not incredibly bountiful in the shops here (NZ) and 
>I'm sure it's probably sold at way over it's true value as a result. Also I'm 
>basically just interested!

>Cheers,
>Bohdan
>[email-masked]       Work?   What's that??

Well I got a couple of replies thru the net but not much else so I did 
something I don't seem to do much these days and I went to a library and read 
a book!

"Good Food from Morocco" by Paula Wolfert. She also wrote a book all about 
couscous but the library didn't have that one. Ne way I found out some 
interesting stuff so I thought i'd repeat some of it here.

Monsieur Mouette said when visiting Fez in 1711

" They take a great wooden board, or earthen pan, before them, with a 
Porringer full of flower [flour] and another of fair water; a sieve; and a 
spoon. Then they put 2 or 3 handfulls of the flower into the bowl and pour 3 
or 4 spoonfulls of water on it, which they work with their fingers, every now 
and then sprinkling it with water till it all runs into lumps like small 
pease, and this they call couscouscou. As it rolls up they it out of the bowl 
and put it into a sieve to separate the flower that may remain loose; and 
there are some women so expert at making it, that it is no bigger than hail 
shot, which is the best".

It is made in Nth Africa from a _variety_ of grains eg corn, millet, sorgum, 
green wheat, even green barley shoots, sprouts, crushed acorns and breadcrumbs!

In Morocco they use the term seksu
    Berbers          use               sikuk
sous region                             sksu
Rif Mtns                                   sexsu
Algeria                                     ta'am
Tunisia                                    kouski

Apparently in Brazil there is cuscuz which is couscous from ground maize, rice 
or tapioca. Origin from Berbers via slave trade.
I tried making some myself in the original style but I decided the flour was 
too soft and elastic. The bought packet of couscous I've got (from France) 
says semolina ie the very hard durum flour that normally is used for pasta and 
not for bread (apparently a different spiecies as well from normal bread 
making wheat). I can believe that because I think it would stop the grains 
from being to elastic and sticky as you rub them around inside the bowl. I did 
make some buy the way but it seemed a lot of effort.

Oh well there you are,

b.szymanik

---

From: [email-masked] (Stephen Bloch)
Date: 8 Jan 1994 10:52:42 -0500

Bohdan Szymanik <[email-masked]> wrote:
>couscous but the library didn't have that one.

I suspect you mean her book "Couscous -- and other good food from Morocco",
which is on my shelf.  It is not, in fact, all about couscous; only
about thirty pages of it are about couscous, and the introduction to
that chapter sounds close enough to what you posted that I think she
recycled most of the text.

Commercial couscous I've bought from health-food stores is in tiny,
uniform grains, about the size of a sesame seed; I suspect it's made
by grinding rather than rolling (there are numerous medieval Arabic
recipes that call for making a ball or patty of unleavened dough,
air-drying it or baking it briefly, grinding it, and using the
resulting tiny pellets as I would use flour).  I've also bought couscous
in a Middle-Eastern grocery that was much less uniform in size,
substantially larger on the average, and (I think, though it seems hard
to believe) hollow.

-- 
					Stephen Bloch
				     [email-masked]